Over the two decades prior to the Louisiana Purchase, President Thomas Jefferson had invested considerable time and political capital in finding a river route to the Pacific Ocean.

With around 828,000 square miles of newly acquired land west of the Mississippi River, the young nation needed to fully understand what was beyond its former borders. The Louisiana Purchase by the United States in 1803 was the primary catalyst for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. As we begin to understand the two men’s lives in more detail, we get a greater understanding of how they came to be such integral figures to the expansion of the United States across North America. Ambrose published “Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American” in 1996.Īmbrose focuses the book around the central roles Meriwether Lewis and Thomas Jefferson played in the expedition.

Many books about the expedition and biographies of Lewis and Clark have been written over the years, but the gritty details of their improbable expedition – as told through the voyagers’ journals – had never been so artfully organized and weaved into the context of the historical moment until Stephen E.

Lewis & clark stephen e ambrose